d
to Gaveston in Edward the Second's reign, and, remaining continually
within the gift of the crown, to the Despenser in the succeeding
generation, and finally to Isabella, who declared her policy from
within the walls of Wallingford when she returned to the country. It
was next held by her favourite, Mortimer, and we afterwards find it,
throughout the fourteenth century, a sort of appanage of the
heir-apparent, and especially of the Duchy of Cornwall, to which it
was attached until the Reformation. It was for a moment under the
custody of Chaucer's son: it nursed the childhood of Henry VI., but
with the beginning of the next century it had already lost its
importance. After half that century had passed the castle was already
falling into disrepair; much of the masonry of the town and of the
fortress, lying squared and convenient to the river, had been moved
down stream for the new buildings at Windsor, and when, nearly a
century later again, the Civil War broke out, it was not until after
some considerable repair that the place could pretend to stand a
siege. It fell to the Parliament, and, before the Restoration, was
carefully destroyed, as were throughout England so many foundations of
her past by the orders of Oliver Cromwell.

It has often been remarked with surprise that cities and strongholds
once densely inhabited and heavily built can disappear and leave no
material trace to posterity. That they do so disappear should give
pause to those historians who are perpetually using the negative
argument, and pretending that the lack of material evidence is
sufficient to disturb a strong and early tradition. Those who have
watched the process by which abandoned buildings become a quarry will
easily understand how all traces of habitation disappear.
Three-quarters of what was once Orford, much of what once was Worsted,
has gone, and up and down the country-sides to-day one could witness,
even in our strictly disciplined civilisation, the removal, by
purchase or theft, of abandoned material.

The whole of Wallingford has suffered this fate--the mound, presumably
artificial, upon which the first keep stood, and which was, probably,
a palisade mound of Anglo-Saxon times, remains, but there is upon it
no remaining masonry.

Next down stream of the points with a strategic importance in English
history comes Reading. But the strategic importance of Reading was not
produced by the town's possessing a site of national moment